"Tipping of the Scales"

-- for my brothers / after Bai Juyi, Yoshida Kenko, and Mukai Kyorai

I feel the scales
being peeled off
one by one.

We cannot, in truth,
plan for such enlargement.

Carrying the water bucket
of the ancestors,
year after year,
the slow, soft expansion — just happens
like the widening of shoulders
after ten-thousand sword strikes.

This is a far cry
from all of this
strutting machismo
we're seeing in the icy streets;
man-boys
lacking purpose
aching for war.

There's a different kind of man
quietly blooming-in-silence.

They are being born-of-themselves.

In a thousand years they will say
we were the hermits of our age.
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(c) 2026 / Frank Inzan Owen / The Luminous Procession

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Track: “What Is Home?” / Travelers’ Cloth / Robert Rich

Image: Shed skin of an Olive Python / Queensland, Australia / David Clode